Agriculture is multifunctional. Sustainability Indicators

Context, Conceptual Framework and Sustainability Indicators | 5 as taking into account place-based and context-relevant fac- tors and voices to address the multiple functions of agricul- ture. The IAASTD has made clear how contested AKST are among the hundreds of professionals involved, especially formal AKST. Conlicting perspectives on AKST have led to different options for policy-making, and understanding the competing interpretations of AKST does not guarantee a consensual outcome. IAASTD focuses on AKST issues most relevant to development and sustainability goals. 1.1.2 Agriculture and its global context Importance of agriculture. Agriculture as the source of human food, animal feed, iber and fuel plays a key role in efforts to achieve global sustainable development. It is a major occupational sector in developing countries, with the poorest countries being those with predominantly ag- ricultural economies and societies FAO, 2000. Approxi- mately 2.6 billion people—men, women and children —rely on agricultural production systems, be it farming, livestock production, forestry or ishery. Food security for a growing world population is positioned to remain a challenge in the next few decades. Most food is produced in Asia and other densely populated poor regions, and most of that food is consumed domestically. Because of the high diversity of ag- ricultural systems across the world IAASTD decided to car- ry out ive sub-global assessments in addition to the global one, in order to adequately address issues in the major agri- cultural regions of the world. These regions have developed to their current state for a variety of reasons, and a more speciic reorientation of AKST is likely to be more effective if it addresses region-speciic issues in agriculture, develop- ment and sustainability. The IAASTD has put particular emphasis on addressing issues relevant to tackling poverty reduction, which is central to the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015, though these issues are also expected to remain important long beyond that date. In parallel with the spread and growth of human popu- lation, particularly during the last 300 years, but at a par- ticularly impressive rate since 1950, the transformation of poverty, improve rural livelihoods, and facilitate equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable de- velopment through the generation of, access to, and use of AKST?” Three questions recur throughout the global and sub-global assessments of IAASTD. They concern: 1. Social disparities: How have changing markets and changing access to markets affected development and sustainability goals, and how has this been inluenced by AKST? How and by what have cultural values, tra- ditions and social equity including gender equity been inluenced? What are projected implications of market changes in the future, and how can AKST contribute to informed decision-making? 2. Ecology: How has availability of, access to and manage- ment of natural resources particularly water and soil resources, as well as plant, animal, genetic and other resources affected the development and sustainability goals of IAASTD? How can AKST enhance knowledge of natural resource management? 3. AKST: What have been, and what are projected to be, the implications of institutional and policy changes and funding e.g., private versus public investment; intellec- tual property rights [IPR]; legislative frameworks on access to AKST, on innovation systems and on owner- ship of knowledge? How will AKST inluence social, environmental and economic outcomes of agricultural and food systems? Other central issues relating to hunger, nutrition, human health, poverty, livelihoods and the economy, as well as productivity and technologies are part of the sustainability goals and thus further emphasized in the document. Diversity of views and value systems represented in the IAASTD AKST is not an entity; it is a diverse ield of knowledge and values. Achieving development and sustainability goals requires probing and experimentation, negotiation, and learning among diverse voices and interpretations, as well Table 1-1. Differences between a review and an assessment. Scientific Reviews Assessment Audience Undertaken for scientists Undertaken for decision-makers from a specified authorizing environment Conducted by One or a few scientists A larger and varied group based on relevant geographic and disciplinary representation IssuesTopics Often deal with a single topic Generally a broader and complex issue Identifies gaps in Research issues generally driven by scientific curiosity Knowledge for implementation of outcomes; problem-driven Uncertainty statements Not always required Essential Judgment Hidden; a more objective analysis Required and clearly flagged Synthesis Not required, but sometimes important Essential to reduce complexity Coverage Exhaustive, historical Sufficient to deal with main range of uncertainty associated with the identified issues Source: Watson and Gitay, 2004. 6 | IAASTD Global Report Multifunctionality of agriculture. As an activity, agriculture has multiple outputs and contributes to several ends at the same time Abler, 2004. Agricultural resource management thus involves more than maintaining production systems. Services such as mitigating climate change, regulating water, controlling erosion and support services such as soil forma- tion, providing habitats for wildlife, as well as contributions to cultural activities such as use and preservation of land- scapes and spiritual sites are some of the positive functions that agriculture provides. The OECD identiies two key elements of multifunctionality: externalities and jointness OECD, 2005. Agriculture uses public goods—natural re- sources landscapes, plants, animals, soils, minerals, water and atmospheric N and C for the production of public ser- vices, common goods, and private goods food, feed, iber, fuel. These natural resources are controlled and distributed partly through public entities and partly via privately pro- ducing and marketing entities; hence the issue of externality of costs are borne by the public. Agriculture is embedded in local and regional contexts and is always bound to par- ticular, socially deined relationships and interdependencies between the production of private goods and the use and production of multifunctional public goods, which leads to the issue of jointness Abler, 2004. Globalization in agriculture Globalization in agriculture, aided by information and com- munication technologies ICT, has resulted in economic opportunities as well as challenges, particularly in devel- oping countries. Globalization is typiied by the increased interlinkage and concentration at almost all stages of the production and marketing chain, with functional and re- gional differentiations, and includes transnational corpora- tions that are vertically and horizontally integrated in glo- balization and their increasing power over consumers and agricultural producers. Globalization is also characterized by growing investments in agriculture, food processing and marketing, and increasing international trade in food facili- tated by reduced trade barriers FAO, 2003. The creation of intellectual property rights has become an increasingly important source of competitive advantage and accumula- natural ecosystems into agriculturally used and managed land has accelerated, which coincides with the time when formal AKST began to have a signiicant impact. The world population grew from about 2.5 billion people in 1950 to 6.5 billion in 2005, i.e., by a factor of 2.6; in most countries, growth rates have just recently begun to decrease. Trends indicate that the global population will reach between 7.5 and 11 billion people by 2050, depending on the expected average number of children per women Figure 1-1. World agricultural output, or more speciically, food output as measured in cereal and meat production, in turn, increased even more during the same period, due to large increases in fertilizer use, herbicides, plant and animal breeding, and extension of irrigated area Figure 1-2. The total cultivated area increased much less, i.e., from 1.4 to 1.5 million ha between 1950 and 2005 Wood et al., 2000, based on FAO data, although fallow systems were greatly reduced. For similar igures indicating equally moderate growth of crop area see also the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment MA, 2005a. However, more land was converted to crop- land in the 30 years after 1950 than in the 150 years be- tween 1700 and 1850 MA, 2005a. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer ever applied on the planet has been used since 1985, and phosphorus use tripled between 1960 and 1990 MA, 2005b. Globally, agricultural output has been growing at about 2 per year since 1960, with higher rates in developing countries because area productiv- ity, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, is still much lower than in industrialized countries and in Asia FAO, 2006a. Along with an increase in agricultural output, water use in agriculture has increased to 7,130 cubic kilometers today and is expected to double by 2050 CA, 2007. Another form of competition has recently been ob- served between the use of crops for food and feed and the use of the same crops e.g., maize for biofuels; moreover, a competition at the world level is rising for the supply of protein-rich animal feeds. Today’s land use patterns in general reveal the impor- tance of agriculture as a major land management system transforming and making use of natural ecosystems. Given a global land surface without Antarctica of 13,430 mil- lion ha FAOSTAT, 2006, there are still about 30 for- est ecosystems nearly 4,000 million ha, part of which are the least converted in a biological sense. About a further 26 3,400 million ha are pastureland FAOSTAT, 2006, of which about half was converted from natural grassland and the rest from forestland or woodland. About 11.5 are cropland 1,500 million ha FAOSTAT, 2006, most of which was also converted from forestland. The remaining share of the global land surface are deserts, shrubland and tundra about 25, inland water surfaces and wetlands about 4, and built up land for human settlements and other infrastructure about 5. In sum, more than half of the earth’s land surface is intensively used for agricultural purposes such as cultivation, grazing, plantation forestry and aquaculture; and since 1950 one third of the soil has been profoundly altered from its natural ecosystem state because of moderate to severe soil degradation Oldeman et al., 1990. Figure 1-1. Total world population 1950-2050 and average number of children per woman total fertility. Source: UNFPA, 2007